Hero of September 11 hijackers alive, well and still poisoning young minds

High in the misty mountains of Asir, no man could escape the rant of the "evil father" of Khamis Mushayt.

White fluorescent strips illuminated the squat mosque as evening took hold. But powerful amplifiers made up for what the minaret lacked in stature as the imam's message was force-fed into the neon jumble at the centre of town.

This is the conservative corner of Saudi Arabia from which five of the September 11 hijackers were recruited. And according to Ali Al Mosa, an academic reform campaigner, the mosque of Sheik Ahmed Al Hawashi was a vital link in the al-Qaeda recruitment drive.

Claiming his information came from intelligence sources, Dr Al Mosa explained: "Sheik Al Hawashi was the evil father of the whole thing here. He was the one behind it all and he is still there - he knew five of the kids and he was praying with them."

It seemed remarkable that a suspect sheik could still be in charge of a mosque more than a year after the attacks that claimed just over 3000 lives in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. However, Dr Al Mosa said: "He has been here for 25 years and he's very popular. I think that Saudi and US intelligence are still working up solid proof that he knew the kids."");document.write("

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More remarkable still was the determination of officials of the Saudi Information Ministry to block the Herald's attempts to interview Sheik Al Hawashi or anyone else in the region who might have information or an opinion on why the sons of Asir volunteered in such numbers for Osama bin Laden's death missions.

Just to get permission to travel to the region required an undertaking not to approach the hijackers' families. Once in the area, it became a ban on approaching local academics or sheiks. Photographs were forbidden.

The interview with Dr Al Mosa was allowed only after a yelling match in which the Saudis were reminded that before the Herald had left the port city of Jeddah to fly south to Asir, they had undertaken to arrange such a meeting.

As the fist of the information bureaucrats tightened on the Herald's movements, this reporter was informed by a ministry minder that he was a "prisoner" and permission even to take a taxi to the airport was denied. And when the Herald insisted on departing by taxi, three minders followed in a black Ford sedan for the 30-kilometre drive.

An arrangement was made with the taxi driver to detour past the Khamis Mushayt mosque, which was buried amid the dusty commercial hoardings of the town - Pepsi, Gulf Paints, Ryad Bank, Arab National Bank, Al Jazeera Paints. As the taxi pulled in, the sheik was in full flight, but with the Information Ministry close behind, the Herald continued to the airport.

In what some outside observers liken to a deal with the devil, the Saudi royal family draws its legitimacy from a power-sharing arrangement with the religious establishment under which the likes of Sheik Al Hawashi have inordinate control over education and the law.

For many of Saudi Arabia's domestic and foreign critics, this single failing is the root of a raft of economic, social and security problems that beset the oil-rich kingdom today.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the royal family pleaded with the more outspoken clerics to condemn terrorism and to curb their anti-American rhetoric, reportedly offering some of them a bribe in the form of a pension.

Dr Al Mosa said some of the lesser-known hard-line clerics had been quietly removed from their state-paid positions and new rules were being proposed whereby only those over the age of 40 would be given charge of a mosque.

But he said that, such was the power of the sheiks, there had been no public announcement of these attempts to restrain them. Other observers have concluded that the regime has baulked at any concrete steps that would seriously wind back their power.

In an earlier interview in the lobby of the Al Bouhaira Hotel in Abha, Dr Al Mosa explained that two mosques at Khamis Mushayt, about 15 kilometres east of Abha, had been used to draw the young men to terrorism.

"There are a lot of suspect sheiks working in this area. They are intense and they are a part of a radical movement. The universities are the same. We have become more wahabist," he said, referring to the radical reading of Islam by which most Saudis are obliged to live.

"Our political system does not contradict the needs of modern society. But the religious system has dominated and it means we will be even more radicalised," he said.

"It has corrupted the whole education system. Unless you are religious you will not get a place in university, and these people are so well entrenched that they are installing new layers of fellow thinkers beneath them. And we need to change the curriculum - primary, secondary and university - so that our students actually learn something."

Saudi Arabia grants only limited numbers of press visas. A senior official at the Information Ministry said that after complaints of media harassment from the families of the hijackers, the Government was protecting them. He took great pride in the near total failure of the international media to get substantive interviews with any of the families - including the bin Laden family.

What he did not say was that the Government also seems happy to shelter the sheiks who are accused of facilitating the terrorists.